Five Times the Sinner
by CBK1000
Summary: The five times no one saves him, and the one time someone does. The five times she grants no mercy, and the one time she can't help it. Role reversal; Original Caroline, newborn Klaus


**A/N: So here is another little role reversal piece I decided to bang out between Originals one-shots. I will likely do a few of these, which will cover themes/scenes I intend to incorporate into the full-length Original Caroline fic I intend to write once I have completed my Originals series. These are all essentially just little previews of the main event, and serve to assuage some of my role reversal feels while not taking too much time from my current writing projects. I hope you enjoy these little appetizers, but as always, don't be shy to tell me if you don't. **

* * *

Love.

Love love love love love.

How it sharpens itself on a man and stabs him when he least suspects.

They think themselves buried within this cool mint asylum of flaking benches and rustling trees, that no eye penetrates the branches, no foot stirs the grass.

Their tender glances narrow the world and their intertwined fingers close up the gaps, and in this entire ant-teeming planet there exists only these two new lovers with their soft touches and their lowered voices.

So because you are not seen, brother, your betrayal has no impact—because you sneak your kisses and you whisper your endearments your theft doesn't _matter_—just the other bloody _night _you smiled at him and she held his hand and when she kissed him good-bye there was never any _hint _that she wanted it to be another, that she tore her eyes from his so she could meet up with your own—

Elijah—father's respect, mother's preference, and you couldn't leave him this one bloody _thing_—you couldn't allow him this girl in whose arms he sobbed until he was all right—you couldn't bloody _tell him_—

He slams his car door.

He roars off too quickly.

He blows in through the door like a bloody storm.

"Nik?" Bekah calls from her room as he leaps two by two up the stairs, shedding his coat as he goes, wiping his eyes as he runs.

She comes to her doorway to touch his shoulder as he passes, and he shakes her off, he thunders on, he shuts himself away in his studio until tea.

* * *

Finn has come up from Sussex with his wife to show off their new son.

Elijah will be by at six, his mother announces from the kitchen, and then she vanishes in a cranberry steam.

He listens to glasses clinked, to plates clattered, to heels kicked off and loafers circling round, to Kol in the yard with that bloody bat of his, whooping as he swings, cheering when he connects.

"Nik, what's your problem tonight?" Bekah demands.

"Nothing," he says tightly, maneuvering his charcoal round the pad.

"Really? So you haven't been moping about all day like someone ran over your puppy?" She sits down lightly on the arm of his chair. "Come on, Nik."

"I said it's _nothing_, Bekah," he snaps, and with a huff she leaps down, flicking her hair over one shoulder.

"Fine. If you're going to be an ass about it."

He roughs in the center, shades a corner.

At five to the door whispers open, clicks shut, and in the foyer erupts Kol's machine gun barrage about the girls he has chased and the coaches he has impressed, and now here come Elijah's replies as he rounds the corner with the youngest Mikaelson on his heels, just the right amount of impressed, his mouth open in a laugh, his cheeks rouged by the wind.

Or is it her who has put that touch of peppermint in his cheeks?

She obviously fires your loins, 'Lijah, why should she not blaze in your cheeks as well? Tell him, brother—did you dismount that moral high horse all on your bloody own, or did charming Tatia slip the stirrups from your boots?

"Good evening, Niklaus."

"What have you been up to?" Bekah asks, emerging from the kitchen to kiss his cheek.

He scribbles furiously, his fingers tightening.

"Niklaus?"

"Don't bother with him. He's in a mood tonight. But I want to hear all about your trip to Italy. Meet anyone interesting?"

"You are entirely enough female companionship for me right now, Rebekah," he says with a smile, unbuttoning his coat.

Its lapels exhale a gust of half-thawed spring.

"Italy was wonderful; I'll take you in the summer, if you like. As a graduation present, perhaps?"

"Which did you like better, Elijah? The food or the women?" he asks through his teeth, pressing down with his charcoal until it snaps.

His brother pauses in the entryway to the kitchen, giving a little wave to someone inside. "I'm afraid I didn't have much time for the fairer sex while I was there, brother. Italy was mostly business, little pleasure."

"What a shame. I hear Italian women are much hotter than English," Kol chimes in, his bat still over one shoulder.

Rebekah sniffs. "Would you put that bloody thing away? Mother will kill you if you break something with it. And Italian women don't shave, Kol. So unless you liked that tall bear thing in that one series of movies—what were they called again, Nik?—you should probably stick to your London whores."

"Star Wars," he supplies automatically, not looking away from Elijah, who peers back with wrinkled brow.

"You're thinking of the French, Bekah."

"So not a single girl?" he rasps, tensing his right hand on his thigh.

"Why the persistence, Niklaus?"

"What do you care if Elijah got his rocks off, Nik?"

"I care, Elijah. So if you've any tips you'd like to offer—"

"Did you not have any time, or did you simply not bother to create any? Of course, duplicity seems to be your thing, so perhaps a woman here, one over there—it would keep things interesting, wouldn't it?"

"What are you _talking _about, Nik?"

Elijah has gone very still.

"Tell me, Elijah, did she make you wait to fuck her, or is unfaithfulness really so irresistible an aphrodisiac?"

"_Nik_! Elijah, what is he talking about?"

"Rebekah, Kol. Niklaus and I need a moment alone."

"I asked you if you _fucked her_!" he screams, and his sketchbook is across the room before he even discovers he has thrown it and his feet are beneath him in a moment which has been lost in a fog, and now from the kitchen pokes his mother's head, her mouth tight. "_Niklaus_. I know I did not just hear you use such language in my home."

Finn and Sage gather behind her, Finn bouncing his son, Sage adjusting her blouse.

"Mother, Niklaus and I need a moment."

Discretion, brother—isn't that your _specialty_—shut doors, furtive meetings, conversations under cover, interactions out of sight—but you cannot _contain _him, Elijah—he will not be another bloody corner _liaison _of yours—

He backhands the chair he has just vacated onto its side.

"Niklaus!" his mother snaps. "What on earth has gotten into you?"

"Niklaus," Elijah soothes, holding up both hands. "Let's talk. Please, Niklaus—I didn't—it was not my intention to hurt you. Tatia and I—"

"_Don't_!" he roars. "Don't even speak her _name_."

Bekah steps away from Elijah to lay her hand on his arm. "Nik, calm down please."

He rips it off.

He kicks the chair, sends his sketchpad in a stone skittering across the floor, throws Bekah off once more as she grips him round the elbow. "Nik, _stop_, you're scaring me—"

"How long have you been _fucking _her behind my back, hmm, Elijah? When she doesn't answer her phone, when I swing round her flat and she isn't home—is that because she's off with you? She goes off to your bed instead of coming home to mine, isn't that how it _bloody is_?"

"Niklaus," his brother, his friend, his bloody _hero_ says so plaintively, and something hot balloons from gut to chest to throat and with a scream he's certain cannot be his and with hands that no longer feel like his own, he surges forward, and he slams his fist into Elijah's jaw.

Again, again, _again_, how does it _feel_, Elijah—streaming eyes, tight chest, knotted stomach, _feel _this brother, these are all blows you yourself have landed—shattered ribs, askew jaw, cracked wrist, but at least he has no _knife_, Elijah—at least he has not buried the tip and twisted it round, at least he has not got you by the bloody _heart _and squeezed until there is no more—

Elijah folds onto his knees, one arm round his side, the other out in front of him, and a kick smashes this aside, a fist batters him down, onto his face he goes, with a gurgle he slumps, Bekah screaming in the background, Kol trying to wrestle him back, Finn in a spring for his arms—

"Nik, _stop_! Nik, _you're killing him_!"

He kicks until Elijah's lips stop frothing and his hands no longer twitch, until Finn's hands seize his shoulders and Kol's arms circle round his waist, until his rubber legs buckle and his hot eyes spoil his aim.

They hold him until they are certain he is done, and then they leave him in a boneless pile on the floor, hands open across his thighs, head bowed at the neck, sobbing until the ambulance screams round the corner.

* * *

He does not look at himself as he rinses his hands in the sink and he dabs the blood from his cheeks.

* * *

The door shuts very quietly.

He is on his feet in a moment.

He springs down the stairs, vaults the chair still helpless on its side, avoids Elijah's blood, sidesteps his abandoned sketchpad—

He stops dead in the foyer.

Mikael unbuttons his jacket very slowly.

There is no mother to buffer his fists, no Bekah to soothe his words.

In the hall between them there is only silent dust, ticking clock, faraway street, the sizzling tires, the heartbeat rain, good-byes called out and neighbors rushing in.

Mikael hangs his coat.

He moistens his sawdust mouth and he flexes his cold marble fingers.

"Did I kill him?" he asks, and how _small _his voice is.

Mikael laughs so coldly. "Please, boy," he says, and steps forward.

* * *

Elijah is released in two days.

He is bedridden for seven.

* * *

_Please_.

What an interesting word.

Such a high-pitched thing, a canine decibel.

It wavers, it limps along, it rises sharply and it drops off suddenly.

Please, Caroline, we didn't mean to, give us one more shot, we deserve another try, show us some mercy, don't take this away, blah blah _yadda_.

But here's the thing, boys.

What she said was not 'give it your best', what she meant was not try your hardest, gold sticker for your effort, d minus in execution but a plus for intention.

A girl has to have some standards.

Corner the bitch fast—wasn't that what she commanded, isn't that what she _demanded_, did anyone hear that incorrectly, was there a stumble in her instructions, does she stutter when she speaks, can you not just follow _along_—

Under compulsion they dig their own graves and at her command they lay down inside them, and with one heel she goes to work covering them back over, these eternal funeral mounds with their temporary wax doll corpses.

She listens to the dirt muffle their screams and the mold fill their ears and she walks away with a smile.

* * *

On a Wednesday he lays down with no hole in his chest and come Thursday he wakes up with two through his heart.

He stumbles away between his mother's sculptures and his father's car, and in the silence of a world not yet gone to work or herded off to school he staggers along, his arms pebbled, his stomach churning.

Mother—mother what's happening to him—mother why did he tread on frightened boyhood tiptoes through red halls—mother where did you _go_—mother for what does he _hunger_—

He spots the jogger on the third corner he reaches, and he understands.

Her feet strike the pavement in a great roll of thunder and her thighs hiss in an antennae friction and listen to that _heart_—

He tries so hard not to follow.

This girl with sweet throat, full belly, ample chest—she has a husband, a child, a _friend_—she is no meal, she has a birthday to reach, grandchildren to welcome, she must smile ruefully into her mirror as she plucks another gray hair and settle down beneath cool snow bank linens from which she will never emerge with her ancient mummy-dust fingers and her dehydrated apricot cheeks.

He doesn't—he can't—how could he even _think_—her wrist does not tempt him, her neck does not beckon him—God, mother, hasn't he wept to Bekah so many _times _that he is a _person_, that he just wants to be treated as such, that he is no animal to be kicked around, no object to be tossed about—

She catches a whiff of something.

Perhaps the blood in a stiff brown crest on his shirt, a trace of his soap, a hint of his cologne—perhaps only the prey bristling of suddenly alert hair along arms, nape, hands.

Whatever she has sensed, however much she has guessed, she understands instinctively that on her heels slinks a lion, in her chest beats a rabbit, her arms pump harder, her feet thunder louder—

Round the next curve she plunges, through a front garden she cuts, past blind windows, beyond motionless cars—

He is five feet behind her, and then suddenly he stands merely an inch away.

He begs her to run, he cuts her off when she tries.

He doesn't want her to be afraid, not of him, he is a _nice _boy, he brings his mother flowers, he takes his sister shopping, he loved dear Henrik like a father, he holds doors for the old, he cherished a girl until it hurt—

"Please please please please _please_," she whispers as he holds her down by the throat.

"I'm _sorry_," he says so bloody _sincerely_.

He rips her open.

He strokes her hair with his red, red hands and he presses his cheek to her own, and he wants to know _why;_ what has been awakened inside of him; isn't there anyone to _stop _him, _please_.

* * *

"Caroline?" the girl asks so shrilly. "As in—"

"You have heard of me!" she replies with perky smile and tilted head. "This is going to be a lot of fun. So, Brandy, what I need you to do is stand against that wall, ok? And is that your boyfriend over there? The one with the blonde hair? In the green shirt? Yes? Call him over. Hi, Dominique? I'm Caroline. Nice to meet you. Listen—I have some bad news. Your little girlfriend here sort of made a bit of a mistake. It's a long story, but basically she screwed up something that I've been working on for a very long time now, and unfortunately, when these little things hit the fan, there's always some collateral damage. Which would be you, in this case. So here's what I need you to do. I can hear that little heart of yours just frantically pumping away, and what I'd like you to do, Dominique, is to reach your hand right in there, and rip it out. Brandy, sweetie, stay where you are. Shh, shh; it's going to be just fine, I promise. I promise, ok? Now here's what I need _you _to do: after your boyfriend rips out his heart, you're going to pick it up, and you're going to eat it. He's taking your place, Brandy. So instead of me tearing things out of you and consuming them piece by piece while you look on with so much pain, and hurt, and terror in your eyes, he's stepping up to the plate, he's making this _sacrifice _for you, and I find that really beautiful. It's the sort of thing that makes me really believe in love, you know?"

She wipes the tears from the girl's eyes and she sets her hands on the girl's shoulders, and with that perky smile on her lips but not in her eyes, she tells them, "Ready, everybody? Ok, go!"

* * *

The first tremor is merely a cramp, a touch of arthritis in a hand which will never know this seismic affliction of the infirm.

He cocks his head and he flexes his fingers and he paints on.

Out of this turpentine fog emerges this girl whose life he snipped off at the start, and he pauses for a moment to watch her rebirth, to sit in quiet deference to this canvas resurrection.

Lust files off the sharp corners of a memory, blunts its edges, blurs its details, and so he does not remember the precise shape of her mouth, the exact curve of her cheek, the slanting eyes, sweeping neck, freckled nose, but he has reassembled enough of the pieces for this imperfect monument, this inadequate tombstone.

He leans forward.

He lifts his brush.

Down a stippling, up a stroke.

His wrist loosens with rubber elasticity, jerks itself suddenly up too far, whips itself back down too low, and he screams.

He pitches sideways out of his chair.

On the floor of his studio he is crumpled up, smoothed back out, his spine snaps, his vertebrae re-link, crack go his fingers, his toes, his ankles, his teeth pierce his lip, his nails puncture his palms, he rolls over with a muffled sob, cries out for his sister, his brother, his _mother_—

He steps out a beast, his hide prickling, his nostrils flaring, his tail in a wary quillling, and through London's back streets he makes his way, collecting her midnight people of fag smoke and alleyway pheromones, eating on the run, tearing as he goes, their limbs in an eel slithering down his throat, their screams in a painful ricochet inside his head, everything smog and rubbish and pungent copper lives snuffed out in a blink.

Mother, he says so tremulously from the doorway of her room. Mother, is it not enough that he walks about in this skin that belongs still to the boy while underneath stirs the beast? Must he really be so _literal_—what have you _done _to him—one demon was not enough, Niklaus the _lesser _must be twice the monster, he must have this one extra layer between him and his family, father has not built the wall high enough, he has not stacked the barrier _tall _enough—

No, she tells him, but you do not _get to do this, mother_, you are not allowed to bend his bones, to ripple his flesh, to take apart Nik piece by piece by piece and to set him aside in a jumble—what do you _think is going to emerge, mother_—how many _times _can he be _discarded _with no consequence—where will he go, what will he do, who will he _be_ if you do not love him, mother, _please_—

Niklaus, leave, she orders him, and he forces his way inside and by lamplight he takes away until he is satisfied.

* * *

She tails the boy from bar to street corner.

He has heard the click click clicking of her heels, the slow susurrus of breath, the fast flutter of heart, her perfume cocks his head, her veins dilate his eyes.

Sweet throat, warm thighs, full wrist—like a taste, wouldn't you, little boy?

Come and get her.

She watches him circle around to the back of a shop with a smile, and she walks on.

He picks up her trail.

She steps from sidewalk to crosswalk, curls bouncing, hips swishing.

In an alleyway he blocks her escape and with smile still in place she pivots to confront this boy with his cute little curls and his charming little dimples, and while she is absolutely sure those things just blow the ladies' panties, she's here on business, kid.

You are not the first of your kind, who with pretty face and clever hands has sought to bring her down, who with confectioner's tongue offers up his candy promises and his honey lies, who thinks that just because he has spread her legs he has opened up her heart.

"Niklaus Mikaelson, right?"

He dimples again and links his hands behind his back. "Please; call me Klaus."

"I'm looking for a Stefan Salvatore. You wouldn't happen to know him, would you?"

He takes a step forward. "Now what would you want with Stefan, sweetheart, when I'm so much more fun?"

She is on him in a blink, her hand around his throat, his back to the bricks, their noses half an inch apart. "You like your spleen where it is, right, little boy? I said I'm looking for Stefan. More specifically, I'm looking for his little bitch of a girlfriend, Katerina. Katherine, I believe she goes by now. I have a lot of eyes, _Klaus _Mikaelson. I know you and Stefan have stirred up your share of shit in this city. So where is your little boyfriend?"

The boy is still _smiling_, God what is _wrong _with this freak—

"Didn't you _hear _me?" she snaps.

"Caroline," someone breathes behind her, and in a flash she swings around, her hand empty, the Mikaelson boy wheezing, Stefan a ghost, Katherine a corpse.

She just loves it when the mere sound of her voice drains a cheek so completely and empties the lips just as utterly.

"Stefan. Just the vampire I was looking for. And _Katherine_. So glad to see you. It's been a long time."

"_Run_," Stefan snaps, stepping in front of the Petrova bitch.

"I don't think so," she says, and with one sweep of her arm she sends him flying, off the wall he rebounds, into a cluster of garbage cans he slams, the trash in a snowfall all around them, Katherine a blur, she merely a smudge—

She snags the little skank's elbow, and she yanks her back. "You have run long enough, Katherine. The next time you pick a friend to steal from and to _screw over_, pick one your own size," she spits, and with a sharp crack of the ribs and a moist squelch of the heart, she leaves the Petrova bitch in a pile at her feet.

* * *

There is of course a certain despair in eternity.

Not a square inch sags, no bone powders, no libido stalls, the eyes do not swim about in their blind milk cataracts, the hair does not fall, the mind will not decay, forever will he keep his forehead of twenty-five, always will he look down to find no age spots on his hands and no Parkinson's rattling in their tips—

But the trees that ripen from green to orange.

The buildings knocked down and the high rises sprung up.

The revolution that is technology, always on the charge.

December years, blizzard decades, flash flood centuries.

Generations put away in the ground, men murdered, women born, life lived to its limits but never beyond, the ancient grandparents with their crinkled papyrus cheeks preceding their children beneath the loam, _life_, an inescapable cycle, from cradle coverlet to sepulcher dirt, always will man one day step off this carnival journey, never is he not denied its conclusion, but him, _him_—

If one day you peer into your own mortality, if one day you understand suddenly that your eyes will cease to see, your heart to beat, your lungs to pump—if one day you accept suddenly that that which surrounds you, home, work, hotel, will be sucked away into a void, wallpapered with black, that you will lie down with the worms and wake up with the maggots—if this _frightens _you—

Recall this year during which you accomplished nothing and you made no friends and you gained no recognition, and imagine, if you will, a thousand more.

Your friends have died.

Your family has moved on.

But there remains one still, there is a creature, frozen, stifled, _smothered_, and though he is of no import, though he contributes no impact, though he wrinkles not present nor future nor progress, he carries on.

He travels alone to colonize Mars.

He putters about in isolation on Venus.

He is forgotten, looked over, left _behind_.

And ten more millennia of this, he has been granted.

He takes off the ring his mother made him and he touches the necklace his sister gave him, and he steps out into the sun.

He falls down a torch, he gets up a coward.

He sits for so long in the grass of this childhood home where no one loved him enough, too frightened to die, too terrified to live.

* * *

"Why don't you go on and have a rest, mate?" he asks her partner, and then he steps in to take the man's place, his hand sure on her waist, his other tight around her fingers.

"If you just scared off dinner, you're going to take his place," she snaps.

He smiles. "Good evening to you as well, Caroline."

"What are you doing here?"

"The Mikaelsons are rather high up in London society, love. We've pretty much an open invitation to these sorts of soirees." He smiles again, and way down inside of her, there is a kindling.

Somehow, inexplicably, in_conceivably_, she wants to smile back.

She lets him waltz her past another couple. "Why aren't you afraid of me?"

He looks at her very softly.

Though she has been buried, she lies entombed, she has been crushed beneath layers of years and tiers of kills, there is still this fragile little girl who couldn't be loved enough, who wanted so much and got back so little, who chased Katherine for a century and cried when it was over, who just wanted the little heartless _bitch _to never _leave_, and this girl—

_God_, she remembers what it was like to be viewed in this way, to be told with eyes if not words I know you are hurting, deep down it's something else, don't worry we can fix it.

"You aren't nearly as menacing as you think."

She scoffs and looks away. "I killed Katherine Pierce right in front of you."

"I never liked her much anyway, tell the truth. My friend, though—he's a bit put out with you, I confess." He stares so freaking _hard_. "If I may be so bold—what did she do?"

"You may not."

He dimples.

She rolls her eyes.

For an entire song, they dance in silence.

"I'm not afraid of you," he says very quietly as the violins fade away and the piano dies off and the cello breathes it last, "because I've seen far worse."

"There's nothing worse than me," she tells him coldly, slipping her hand from his shoulder and peeling his fingers off her waist.

"You're wrong, love. Nothing so ravishing can be quite so horrendous as she insists, hmm?"

"Well, that's where _you're _wrong. Beauty is a double-edged sword, _sweetheart_. While you're ducking the one side, the other swings back to take off your head."

"A real Black Widow, then, aren't you?"

"Sleep with me and find out. But if I were you, I wouldn't risk it. You have a very pretty head." She straightens out her gloves and looks around with a frown. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do. I'm actually here on business. The hosts of this fancy little evening have something of mine."

He raises an eyebrow. "I'll bar the doors, if you compel the guests."

She lifts her chin imperiously, and snags a wine glass from a passing waiter. "You don't want to ass kiss your way into my panties, Mikaelson."

From another tray she takes a spoon, and she brings it with a clink against the side of her glass. "May I have your attention, please? Marcia Dries? Could you step forward, sweetie?"

He goes away with a smile to block their escape.

* * *

With eyes full of hurt she tore Katherine Pierce's heart from her chest, and with her laugh that sets his own to flight she burrows her way beneath his skin, and when one evening he glances down and he finds his sketchpad full of her, he leans back in his chair and he shuts his eyes.

One week he tracks her down in a bar, the next he corners her at Broadgate, and does she understand how much light her eyes hold when she thinks no one looks, does she comprehend how far her smile reaches, when she thinks no one cares to watch it unfold—

Her scorn eggs him on, her denial firms his resolve, her eyes hold him fast, her laugh pins him down.

He shares a sketch with her, he pulls a story from her, he does not judge her kills or begrudge her revenge, he lies down to sleep with her eyes behind his smile and he wakes up with her face still in his dreams.

Story time's over, Klaus, she tells him one evening on the Millennium Bridge, and she walks away with both hands buried in her coat, her step brisk, her curls trembling, but before she puts a hundred feet between them, she turns back, and she smiles, just a little thing, really, but straight through his chest it goes, right to his heart it strikes.

Save him from this unavoidable snare, love, this rotten ambush thing with its fickle hands and its lips passed on to another.

Caroline—

Caroline, love, don't _break _him, sweetheart, not _again._

* * *

The first time she ever killed a man, she cried as she drank, she rocked him down to death, she cradled him until he bled no more.

But this lazy illiterate generation, these people who take no responsibility, who bear no burdens, who forgo book for phone, who befriend their children but do not parent them, who will never be held accountable—these ones are practically _asking _for it.

She eats them without shame.

* * *

He only wanted to see Bekah for a moment, to greet Elijah, to torment Kol, to pay his respects to Finn—is this so bloody _wrong_, father, that he would just want to _belong_—that he would just like to know if someone still _cares_—

He leaps from Bekah's room with two bullets in his spine, stumbles as he crushes the flowers beneath her window, goes down with a cry as a foot kicks out his knees and a hand seizes his hair—

"Didn't I tell you not to come back here, boy?" Mikael hisses, and one thrust nearly guts him, the second almost skewers him, and now he rag dolls down onto his hands and knees, he skitters away wheezing, he is yanked back screaming—

Mikael flips him onto his back.

He blocks his father's next swing though it tears the wound in his gut and it pulls the rend near his heart, but the next makes it through, past guard, into chest—

And then from behind Mikael, there is a sudden scream.

A pair of arms round his waist, a hand stretched out for his own, an indistinct struggle, fingers latched tight to his wrist and fangs sunk deep into his neck—

"_Nik, run_!"

With stake broken off in him, bullets wriggling around inside him, he stumbles for the curb, reaches the street in one desperate burst, falls down in a great faucet emptying, his mouth dripping, his nose rushing, all of him red, the pavement bright underneath him, the sky swirling above him—

"Nik, _go_! Nik, _please_!" she screams, and he scrapes himself up, he staggers onward, he slumps down onto one hand, he drags himself forward by the nails, kicks his feet along behind him, slithers his legs after, puts his blood and his sweat and his vomit in a messy mollusk trail underneath him—

"_Nik_!"

* * *

She finds him on the far side of one of Paddington's tracks, leaking, crusted, panting.

He is balled up so small.

She crouches down beside him and reaches out one hand for his stained curls, something big in her throat, something hot behind her eyes, and what exactly happens inside of her, looking down on this infant boy with his trivial nothing years, she is not sure.

But this occurrence dislodges the stake from his stomach and the one from his chest, and God how _gently _it turns him over and it feels about with shaking fingers for the wooden slivers in his spine.

He opens his eyes as she works.

"Why would you save me?" he asks roughly.

Why would she save him when no one else has bothered, why wouldn't she let him _die_, this boy who has meant nothing for so long, who does not belong, who wanders eternally alone, who presses his nose to the glass and who watches always from beyond, a foreigner among his own, an interloper, an atrocity, an _other_.

"I don't know," she whispers.

* * *

"I guess I think you're worth it," he hears.


End file.
